Supreme Court to hear Dayanidhi Maran plea today

The former Telecom Minister has argued that the Madras High Court did not consider the legal circumstances before cancellation of bail and the order was an error in law.

Former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran has moved the Supreme Court against a Madras High Court order cancelling his anticipatory bail the illegal telephone exchange case. File photo

The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear former Union Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran’s challenge against a Madras High Court order >cancelling his anticipatory bail and asking him to surrender in three days to face charges of having an illegal telephone exchange in his house during his years in office between 2004 and 2007.

With hardly 48 hours before his surrender, Mr. Maran approached a three-judge Bench led by Justice T.S. Thakur for immediate relief and stay of the High Court order.

In a short mentioning, Justice Thakur told senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, for Mr. Maran, that the case would come up before an appropriate bench on August 12, 2015.

Mr. Maran has argued that the High Court did not consider the legal circumstances before cancellation of bail and the order was an error in law. He has argued that bail is cancelled only when there is danger of the person fleeing the country or influencing the witnesses in the case.

In this case, he contends, neither apprehension is considered or sounded out in the High Court order. He contended that the CBI had sought the cancellation of his bail only to humiliate him.

In the order on Monday, Justice S. Vaidyanathan observed that Mr. Maran was involved in “serious offences” like corruption, cheating and causing wrongful loss to the extent of crores to the public exchequer.

The court had found “considerable force” in the government's version that Mr. Maran did not deserve special concession when a number of undertrials were languishing in jails.

According to the prosecution, as Minister, Mr. Maran entered into a criminal conspiracy with officials of the BSNL and by abusing their official positions, caused a huge financial loss and wrongful loss to the exchequer to the tune of Rs. 1.78 crore.

The prosecution alleged that the former Minister installed over 300 telephone connections in his residence in the name of the accused government servants to show these connections illegally under “service category”, thereby making no payments for the installation and rentals.

Mr. Maran was granted anticipatory bail for six weeks on the condition that he would cooperate with the agency in the investigation.

Former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran arriving at the CBI Headquarters for questioning in New Delhi on July 02, 2015.